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My Trip to the Holy Land

By the time you read this column I will either be in or well on my way to Israel. My trip this time will fall during the Feast of Tabernacles and, in spite of, all the other less pleasant events going on in the neighborhood should make for an interesting visit.

Israel is a tiny sliver of a nation - roughly the size of New Jersey - bounded by the Mediterranean Sea on one side and with enemies, instability and danger on all the others.

For one of Israel's antagonists to attack it is not a long-range operation at all but tantamount to walking across the street. Having common borders with Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, these borders have to be meticulously patrolled and maintained to prevent suicide bombers and other types of insurgency.

Vigilance has to be the national byword for the state of Israel and even a momentary letting down of the guard could be catastrophic, but regardless of the aggressor role so often assigned them by the world's media, no people on earth want peace more or have given up more in an effort to attain it.

It's hard to imagine just how tiny the state of Israel really is and yet it seems that every time some world leader comes up with a new Middle East peace plan it always involves Israel giving up more territory, and the truth of the matter is that Israel doesn't have anything left to give up.

Realistically speaking, the reason these peace plans never work has little to do with Israel giving up territory, they could give up everything but one block of Tel Aviv and their enemies still wouldn't be happy, they simply want the state of Israel to disappear, to disintegrate, to cease to exist and until the "peacemakers" grasp this reality, the Middle East peace talks will yield no meaningful fruit.

Israel is not going to disappear, disintegrate nor cease to exist. It is the one nation on earth whose existence is eternally guaranteed by the word of Almighty God and the sooner the world can accept that ancient truth, the sooner some headway can be made in the peace process.

Israel may be a little dog but their bite is vicious and they are not timid about paying back in spades any attack on Israeli soil. They simply cannot and will not ignore or discount acts of violence against its citizens.

Israel seldom gets a fair shake from the agenda-driven world media who almost always take the side of the "Palestinians," whose homeland they accuse Israel of taking away. Either not realizing or not caring that the Palestinians never had a homeland and Israel only occupies part of the land deeded to the twelve tribes by God in ancient times and United Nations resolution in 1948.

I say only part of the land because what God gave them was much larger and they have even given up some of the land in the original United Nations agreement.

And to further set the record straight, the reason that there is no Palestinian nation is not because it was invaded by Israel, but rather because the land that was agreed to for that purpose in the UN resolution by surrounding nations invaded what is known today known as the West Bank when they attempted to destroy the newly born modern State of Israel in 1948.

I hope to get a little insight into what is going on from the Israeli point of view, to ask some questions and expose some facts the media tends to ignore. I have been invited to tour a strategic Israeli industry and visit in a Jewish home and hopefully develop an overview of current events from the Jewish side of things and report them to you in a series of soapbox columns in the weeks to come.

This will be my third trip to Israel, a land and a people I have developed a deep and abiding love and respect for. Before I ever went to Israel I was told that a trip there would change your life.